A number of factors contribute to the verdict of whether or not a family will choose to apply family planning which is defined by the World Health Organization as a family’s decision to determine the desired number of children and the time spacing between the pregnancies and know the means they can apply to achieve that picture. Out of all the factors, cultural perspectives are distinctly significant because they constitute the mindsets by which a married couple in a rural area will ultimately act upon, and eventually either have two to three children or 10. The most common of such perceptions is the idea that the more children the parents bear, the more the family’s wealth will increase. In that sense, children are viewed as profitable commodities that will actually bring in more money than they consume. Dr. Ayman Zohry, a Cairo-based population and migration expert, equates this mindset with an “economic theory.” “The cost of the child with wealthy people is expensive but the cost of children in slum areas is very low, and they are considered an asset to the family so the more, the better,” he said,…
Cultural Perspectives on Fertility and Contraception in Rural Egypt
December 13, 2017
